


coping

by koganewest



Series: Keith Genuary [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam (Voltron) Deserves Better, Angst, Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Kerberos Mission, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Pilot Error, Post-Kerberos Mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 13:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17407949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koganewest/pseuds/koganewest
Summary: Keith is struggling with the loss of Shiro, and so is Adam.





	coping

**Author's Note:**

> keith genuary day 14: Adam

The first significantly important day Shiro misses after being declared dead on the Kerberos mission is his own birthday, and consequently, it's the first significantly bad day Keith has during that time. 

When he screws up on the simulator that day, he's thinking about the gift he'd gotten for Shiro with the spare change he'd scrounged up throughout the Garrison confines — a brand new lanyard for the keys of his bike, the one he rides when he takes Keith off the property to blow off steam and decompress. Now, the gift sits heavily in pocket as James Griffin and a few of his friends beat the _living shit_ out of Keith for his minor mistake that’d cost them close to nothing. 

He just takes it. 

The resignation Keith experiences is another brutal reminder of the person he was missing so badly. Since Shiro isn't around, Keith has to watch his every step; there's no one to bail him out anymore, and the Garrison officials will use any possible chance to get rid of Keith. 

So he lets four of his peers take out their irrational anger on him, knowing that things would end worse if he defended himself. After all, no one would believe that he hadn't started the fight — his record often is incriminating, even if he isn't at fault. Keith knows he isn't the type of kid to be given benefit of the doubt, anyway. Shiro's probably the only person who listens to his side of the story, and he isn't here to stick up for him, so he opts to accept the beating without protesting. 

After they've had their fill of using Keith as a punching bag, James spits in his face and turns on his heel — but not before snapping the finishing shot, the deadly blow, the harsh phrase that will repeat itself in Keith’s head for months without ceasing: “Shirogane can't help you now, can he?”

Keith curls into himself, cradles his pounding head, and cries into his hands.

* * *

Barely five minutes pass before Keith feels himself being lifted to his feet and helped out of the vacant hallway. He doesn't even have to turn his head to know it's Adam, because no one else (currently on Earth, Keith thinks despondently) cares enough to save him that kind of public humiliation. 

Adam is supporting most of his weight as they walk side by side, Keith’s arm over Adam’s shoulder and Adam’s arm around his waist. Each step they take worsens the aching of Keith’s head, and he wonders briefly if he has a concussion. He probably does. It would certainly explain why his vision is darkened around the edges and why he’s sobbing so hard he thinks he might puke. He doesn’t know how much longer he can walk like this. Thankfully, though, they get to Adam’s room — it’s closer than Keith’s — within the next few minutes.  


* * *

Once the door is unlocked, Adam pulls Keith inside, who graciously ambles over to the bathroom. The second he’s in front of the toilet, he falls to his knees and throws up straight bile, since he hasn’t eaten much of anything all day.

Adam holds back his messy hair and rubs his back until he, too, starts to cry. 

“I miss him so much,” Keith hears, and at first, he thinks he’s the one talking — but it isn’t him. It’s Adam. His voice is different than usual, thick and choked with tears, like his throat is clogged by emotion and refusing to let him get anything out. “I regret what I said so much, Keith, and I— I can’t even take it back anymore!”

Despite that Keith in his late teens and Adam is in his mid-twenties, Keith feels like their both closer to children in that moment, clinging desperately to something that isn’t there: Shiro.

They stay like that, two weeping boys with aching hearts, on the bathroom floor of a Garrison dorm room, for longer than Keith can tell. 

Intermittently, they talk of Shiro and their favorite memories of him — Adam talks of nights spent gazing at the stars on the rooftop, and Keith talks of days spent racing through the deserts that’d once been home for him. It’s comforting in a strange way to know they both are experiencing the same pain; it makes them feel less alone in their suffering. 

Because although their love for Shiro was different in nature, it was identical in magnitude.

They were close before the disaster, but they bond even more in its wake. Their talks are comforting for a long time — until, that is, Keith brings up his theories that Shiro is alive and Adam becomes furious. 

He nearly screams at Keith, accuses him of being delusional, and says he’s only making the loss harder on himself. Adam refuses to listen to, let alone indulge in, Keith’s ideas. Adam refuses to allow the false hope fester in Keith, let alone himself, for more than a second.

In the days that follow, Keith is mad that Adam doesn’t want to try to find Shiro, despite that he claims to love Shiro more than he values his own safety and sanity. But then, he remembers that Adam is hurting just as much as Keith is. They’re just coping differently. Keith catches him crying into Shiro’s old pillow one too many times to ignore, searching for the comforting scent of a man that was long gone. 

That alone is enough to convince Keith not to bother Adam anymore. Now, he keeps his plans to himself.

Adam checks up on him often, though, and Keith learns to do the same for him. Sometimes, they have good days, in which they eat dinner and joke about how awful Shiro is (was) at cooking and that time he nearly burned down the entire Garrison. Sometimes, they have days like the first one, when neither of them can even bare the pain of their loss, let alone support each other. 

And sometimes, they meet on the rooftop, to glare at the stars that stole the man they love most.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked! i love my two boys :,)  
> -lily


End file.
